my bee yard is 300 yards from a farm market that does hay rides and birthday party's. yesterday they called and said there was bees all over ..in the trash, by the snack stands and a few kids got stung.. i am 4 month old with keeping bees and the first thing that came to my mind was the feed in the feeders went dry.. i did not get in till after dark and checked the feeders ..some went dry! i called them and they said if i could move them to the other farm.. i said yep.. Friday night i will pack them up and move them.. after dark i screened them at the entrance and broke my ______s lifting them in the bed of the truck.. 10 hives .. got stung 7 times.. should i have smoked them before loading them and UN loading them? it was after dark! how would u have done it? i did notice some are light.. have to address feeding Sunday..

i don't move hives without suiting up. there are always stragglers and i end up putting my hand on them and getting stung :-). + if you are not really good at closing them and you bump them around, you get angry bees in your face.

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called the government. They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

A light puff or two wouldn't have hurt. But if they are closed off it shouldn't matter much. I always suit up even if I have help and they closed up. I have had hives slide off the dolly or fall while carrying them. If you're doing a two man carry and one of you gets stung there is no telling the results...

I always close them off while moving. Usually I have to move them myself, so I load them up before dark a box at a time and leave them there until early (before dawn) and then close them off and haul them to where I'm going and then unload them a box at a time. But if you have the help to do it in one piece I suppose that's a great way to move them.

i learned in little league football many many years ago that this is usually the time of year that yellowjackets are all over the garbage cans ( lots of soda cans, etc ). of course you and your bees will get blamed anyway, but i'd bet you most of the "bees" in the garbage were yellowjackets.

I always seal hives in the dark whether early morning or at night. This way you get all of them. More important to smoke them when removing your screens at the new location. Even the gentlest of hives don't care much for being moved on down the road.

I tend to assume bees in pop cans are yellowjackets, as they are usually the culprits, but I have seen bees in a real dearth on occasion go after pop, so it's hard to be definitive without seeing them for yourself.

I agree it could have been yellow jackets , I have had several people tell me lately that they had honeybees all over, including some family members, and when I would tell them they were yellowjackets they would say whats the difference, I think sometimes people are unwilling to learn the difference.

i wouldn't blame it all on yellow jackets. I was putting gas in my car at 7-ll last week and the big trash can out at the pump where people usually throw away soda cans and unfinished drinks had lots of honey bees coming and going from it.

Do kids get taught the difference between wasps and bees anymore and what to do with either?Getting stung by a bee or even a wasp is the usually the mammal's fault. Heck 50 years ago I was told wasps were trouble if you troubled them and give them a wide berth , but bees were just too busy to bothered with stinging people so long as you didnt interfere with their work and if they landed on you it was because they were tired or cold, and if a bee wanted something to eat you let it.

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If they increased energy bill for your home by a factor of 4.5 would you consider that cruel? If so why are you doing that to your bees?

Funny you mention that Derekm, I was taught the same thing. I was never stung by a honeybee until I started keeping bees and squishing them during inspections. They have been way less aggressive than wasps in my experience.

As a kid, I was always told I wouldn’t get stung by wasps if I didn’t bother them. However that advice proved to be wrong. I got stung countless times by wasps as a kid and I can still remember all the pain! One time I was sitting on a road side guard rail waiting for Dad to finish washing the car at a car wash in Ohio. Probably about 8 years old at the time and minding my own business when I was attacked by a swarm of wasps. I must have gotten 30 stings that day. It was horrible, the things got into my pants legs and crawled into my socks and kept stinging and stinging. I still find wasp stings much more painful than honeybee stings to this day.

Lived in the country as a child, never got stung by either until a I was 17 when youth hostelling my task was to clear some under growth , unfortunately it had a wasp nest in it and I got stung enough to make me ill for the rest of the day. Bee stings have waited for 40 years and all of them I can really put down to me, "exceeding the speed limit" or "crossing the freeway in the rush hour" or " I told you GO AWAY and you didnt listen did you"Dont kids know how to kill a wasp ? you have to move slow, because it can move faster than you, and you better be sure you are going to ge it, because its gonner come for you!!!!

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If they increased energy bill for your home by a factor of 4.5 would you consider that cruel? If so why are you doing that to your bees?

another trick in moving them is to use a rachett strap around the hive.no slip or opening of the hive that way.i mounted a truck crane on a trailer to move hives and i think its great.i can move 250 lb hives by myself without straining.

bailey

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most often i find my greatest source of stress to be OPS ( other peoples stupidity )

It is better to keep ones mouth shut and be thought of as a fool than to open ones mouth and in so doing remove all doubt.

another trick in moving them is to use a rachett strap around the hive.no slip or opening of the hive that way.i mounted a truck crane on a trailer to move hives and i think its great.i can move 250 lb hives by myself without straining.